Cereal Sightings in 1991’s Stone Cold!

Throw Beverly Hills Cop, Cool as Ice and a big block of Velveeta into a blender, and out would come Stone Cold. The 1991 cult classic stars Brian “The Boz” Bosworth as a rebel cop who plays by his own rules and dresses like a surfer version of General Zod.

It’s terrible and great.

Course, as my pal Hoverbored recently pointed out, the biggest reason to watch Stone Cold has nothing to do with sex or violence or high-speed chases. No, the true draw is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of Batman Cereal!

You won’t have to wait long to see it, either.

In the opening scene, policeman Joe Huff (that’s Boz) just happens to go shopping during a robbery at his local supermarket. It’s exactly what you’d expect, with pratfalls involving Coke cans and all sorts of food-related pandemonium.

The scene was obviously shot in a legit supermarket, and judging by what was on display, filming must’ve taken place in 1990.

The money shot is of the lead crook hiding in the cereal aisle. Look close and you should recognize a number of those boxes.

While Hot Wheels Cereal was mostly famous for including toy cars as in-box prizes, the other two were absolute must-haves. Neither Batman Cereal nor The Real Ghostbusters Cereal were particularly delicious, but they had slick-as-hell boxes and were tied to some seriously white hot franchises.

Look extra close at the second pic, and you’ll notice that the store stocked both The Real Ghostbusters Cereal AND its eventual successor, Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters Cereal. (The latter included Slimer marshmallows and updated box art.)

Methinks some of those boxes were edging dangerously close to their expiration dates!

Watch the whole scene and you’ll spot some other fallen foods, too.

In one shot we get the double-punch of Sunshine’s Hi Ho crackers and Nabisco’s Striped Chips Ahoy. I can take or leave the Hi Hos, but as recently mentioned, Striped Chips Ahoy cookies were awesome in a life-altering way.

Peek around this shot and you’ll see bags of Keebler’s Soft Batch cookies, which are still around today, albeit in packaging that evokes Edna’s Edibles a little less.

More important are the bags of Chips Ahoy Selections, which I’d totally forgotten until framefucking this ridiculous scene from Stone Cold. My God, those were GOOD. The cookies were blessed with obnoxiously huge chunks of chocolate, and were made to resemble the sorts of fancy cookies one might find at a bakery.

At the end of the scene, we even get a brief look at some vintage vending machines, complete with late ‘80s/early ‘90s prizes.

Pay special attention to the leftmost machine, which was filled with cheap slap bracelets. Every kid had tons of those… and the wrist lacerations to prove it. (They ended up getting banned at my school, which naturally only made them more popular.)

Man, I was at Fry’s Electronics this weekend and instead of the usual Spider-Man stickers and tattoos they had a COP GEAR vending machine that had the little thumb handcuffs. I should have taken a photo and framed it.

Eric Bellavance

I always wanted to see a Boz and Dolph team up series where they just walked around with half pained expressions in unusually long trenchcoats while muttering barely intelligible sentences since they were too cool to talk coherently.

I love these articles! And the ones about people’s bedrooms from movies. A good bedroom to check out would be Sarah’s bedroom from Jim Henson’s “The Labrynth”. I saw it on an actual movie screen a few months ago and noticed way more details than I’ve ever noticed. I haven’t gone back to check, but I think she had some trades of Judge Dredd on her shelf! If I remember correctly you and Jay talked about how one of you was unfamiliar with it. Definitely worth checking out.

Spectre

Glad I never ended up in a situation like that in the early 90s. As a kid I would have taken a bullet for Batman cereal- especially if it came with the free bank. Just diving in front of it to intercept said bullet- in slow motion.

JohnV

Damn look at your coat Boz! You better have supernatural powers or be Satan to wear that out to a supermarket and not get laughed out of the store.

I actually had a hell of a dream. Somehow I was warped to our local K-Mart in the 90s or maybe late 80s…but there was SO MUCH STUFF. I went nuts…I filled up two carts with snack food and drinks alone…and a third cart was for video game stuff haha…

Oh man it was fun. No idea why K-Mart…honestly we never really went to it when I was a kid…I mean we went into it a few times but not enough that it would make sense to pick it over all the other places…

And just did a 5 second search on Google…did K-Mart EVER sell food? It looks like they don’t…or no longer do…now that IS odd…why the heck did I think of K-Mart…weird dreams.

BrianF

There’s 2 boxes of Graham Oh’s in that pile of Apple Cinnamon Oh’s( Graham is the yellow box). They’re still around today and the box is virtually unchanged.I buy them because they are always on sale.

Jadeb

To think that once Batman cereal sat on a shelf right next to Real Ghostbusters cereal. What a time to be alive.

At least today we have a cereal that has actual cookies in it, rather than just that poser Cookie Crisp. Every bite sustains my inner child.

Jadeb

They did and do.

Astro Zombie

Fred Savage’s bedroom in Princess Bride is another. Full of Masters of the Universe and vintage MARVEL stuff. And Eugene’s room in Monster Squad is an 80’s time capsule.

Hell yeah, regular food for sale plus their legendary Eateries, where they food ain’t good and the decor… ain’t good, but so what, they sell ICEEs.

Astro Zombie

I love Stone Cold. Vintage 80’s/90’s low budget action schlock at it’s finest. From an era when they’d find some meat-head in the local gym, and cast him in role that was even too cheesy for the likes of Schwarzenegger or Stallone to sully their good names with.

Raising Arizona, Cobra, Big Lebowski all have memorable scenes set in grocery stores. Then there’s intruder and the mist set entirely in super markets.

I’m surprised they’re able to show so many brands in such a violent scene.

I’ve worked as a set dec and Art PA on a few films with grocery store scenes.

On the small passion projects we had to turn all the labels.

On the larger film a lawyer would watch dailies and make screen caps of brands we needed clearances on or we tried to make gaffe tape look like a decorative label to hide the real labels for close ups.

Ooooh, good calls… aded to the list, I’ll credit you if/when I get to them!

And yeah, usually you’re NOT supposed to show brands without permission, though I doubt they got permission for a movie like Stone Cold. On a Nick shoot years ago we had to blur out a toy on a background shelf from a very pricey shoot because it turned out to be licensed when we thought it was generic. Total pain.

Best are the old Saved by the Bell episodes where they’d literally just throw electrical tape over soda cans.

owenrock

I have a strange Deja-vu feeling here…did you do this for X-E back in the day or am I hallucinating…I know I have seen this before, but cant remember if you did it or it was someone else

They usually did ,and one of them was always a Luger for some reason which totally made no sense. Then you’d get an assortment of shitty badges and a fake plastic watch to round out the collection.

The crazy thing is this cop gear one looks like it was made YESTERDAY. These are all pretty new machines, and the card looked way more professional, like modern fonts and stuff. I’ve always felt like the teaser cards of the past were kind of like smaller versions of the airbrushing you’d see on carnival rides, like all airbrushy and crooked and fucked up and bootleg but awesome. This looked like it was actually made with the use of a computer. I’ll have to grab a pic when I head over to Burbank again .

ProactiveMan

I think Pepsi must have thrown a lot of money at Cobra; there’s a Pepsi ad on Cobretti’s house for crying out loud, but to your point, there is an elaborate, mechanised, Pepsi display in the supermarket scene that I find very surreal. They’re trying to stage a tense, gritty scene, but keep cutting back to this oversized Pepsi can ‘pouring’ a rotating brown plastic spiral into an oversized, Pepsi branded cup.

SomeoneElse

I’d love to try Striped Chips Ahoy if they were ever re-released. Don’t know if I ever got novelty cereals except for the Oreos one.

Sammy Hain

This reminds me I need to get on the Funpack Physical Challenge. Wife is out of town this weekend so I’ll have plenty of time for vending hunts

I know that read like a throwaway challenge but it really is fun. I’ve done it a few times. Aside from the obvious prize fun, it’s an excuse to go into every shady deli in town.

SHAEGGY

I strongly disagree, good sir, that Batman Cereal and Real Ghostbusters Cereal weren’t particularly delicious…I loved them both back in the day and both reside in my Top Five Favorite Cereals (Batman at the bottom but Ghostbusters trails only the TMNT Cereal and its best cereal marshmallows ever).

SHAEGGY

I was always partial to the Venture’s store eatery as a kid…Besides Icees, they sold the best snowball treats and the coconut outer coating would be dyed a different holiday-centric color as the calendar flipped (St. Paddy’s green for the win). I remember my aunt taking my sister and me there one year for a Breakfast with Santa event.

Incidentally, my local Venture became one of my area’s last standing Kmarts probably two decades back…It’s usually a ghost town and their small selection of groceries are waaay overpriced (the eatery died at least 10 years ago).

Tremere98

Man, I had a badass duster in the 90s… or at least I always thought it was until now. Seeing someone in a grocery store in a coat like that makes me think that maybe I kinda just looked like a jackass.

Sammy Hain

I think our equivalent is Mexican Carnicerias. I didn’t find too much interesting when I did this for Dice Of Destiny, so I’m going to have to go to the really shady places 🙂

Madra Rua

It’s crazy how some of the products’ packaging hasn’t changed much over time, while others are vastly different. I’m glad you recognized the Hot Wheels cereal box because I could not figure out what on earth that was from the picture alone.

Madra Rua

I was thinking of the Big Lebowski as soon as I started reading this! I haven’t taken the time to really look and see what all is shown in that scene.

I was also thinking that in the future we would watch movies like Zombieland and see what packaging from now we are nostalgic for lol

Madra Rua

Our K-Mart sells food..but I don’t ever buy it because I don’t trust it lol

~SpikeIsMine~

in the final photo I find it so comforting that Kix, Trix, and Cheerios boxes all look pretty much the same now!

It’s always a little strange watching grocery store and department store scenes in older movies, because they’re such unintentional time capsules. It’s not like the scene was written with the intention of being dated, and the scene itself generally isn’t. But the background material almost invariably pinpoints it as long as somebody is paying attention.

The one that really impressed me, though, was an episode of the TV show Fringe. Show was made around the turn of the decade from 2000s/2010s, but this particular episode included a flashback to the 1980s, and the main character getting a toy plane at a toy store. The toy store scene actually had boxes for authentic major 1980s brands such as Masters of the Universe and Real Ghostbusters. I was watching and thinking “somebody really put a lot of effort into this, knowing that very few people notice.”

Teddy Ray

I love it when you do these types of articles. I don’t remember Chips Ahoy Selections at all, but your description of them makes me wish they were still around!

I love spotting stuff like this in older movies/TV shows. I know someone mentioned it in an earlier comment and you’ve written about it in the past, but stuff like this always makes me think about that old bag of Cheetos and Grizzlor in Fred Savage’s room in The Princess Bride.

starwenn

I’m more interested in those Apple Cinnamon Ohs! The graham variety is still around, but I don’t remember seeing those anywhere. I love Apple Cinnamon Cheerios and would have been very happy to have tried those, too. And I forgot Chips Ahoy Selections, too. Striped Chips Ahoy, on the other hand, I remember very well. My sisters and I loved them, too. And as a baker, I was excited to squint in the first few pics and see Duncan Hines and what I think are very different-looking Pillsbury cake mixes. (Ritz, Kix, Cheerios, and Honey Nut Cheerios, on the other hand, have barely changed at all.)

And yes, we had slap bracelets. Don’t remember if my school banned them – they may have. We just either hid them, or wore them outside of school.

Haha. I know exactly what you’re talking about because it’s so distracting. At least stallone got a great zinger in when the guy threatened to blow the place up he replied “Go ahead, I dont shop here!”

Any reason why? If it was incidental and not the focus of a scene (“Let’s stop at this McDonald’s and eat” or “I got Optimus Prime for my birthday and I’ll talk about him and take him everywhere I go!”), it seems like it would fall under fair use.

Not questioning your statement, mind; I was actually hoping you might be able to elaborate on it. =)

Didn’t you also examine the kid’s haul from the government in Flight of the Navigator? Or am I thinking of something else?

SHAEGGY

I had completely forgotten about Hot Wheels Cereal until seeing it in that screen cap…I had it once years ago and it was extremely bland and tasteless (worse than that, I don’t recall it coming with a diecast car inside either).

Paul

Because including the product’s name/logo would be product placement which the company who made the product might not want.

Christian

Its so cool how you spotted all of these in a movie i long forgot about, those early 90’s were really the sweet spot of our generation. I use to watch this movie really late on HBO when it came out, and is one of the movies that made me want to get a motorcycle when i got older.

Have you ever seen the part of Die Hard when Carl Winslow is in that convenient store in the beginning of the movie? Maybe you can try that one next i was always wondering what else is in that store. I just remember seeing the big pictures of snacks and soda’s on the wall that a lot of convenient stores had in them back them.

Lance Miller

My brother and I were HUGE Boz fans growing up, he Is about 4 years older than me, and my hero at the time, so I was mostly into him because of my brother, who was such a fan that he even used 44 as his number while playing HS and College football since it was Bosworth’s college number. Anyway, once we saw that he was coming out with an action movie we were super stoked and went opening night. We knew it was a terrible movie but we loved it all the same and watched it at least 3 times in theaters and countless times on VHS. Now whenever I watch it, it takes me back to those days with my brother and just holds a special place in my memories.

Brian

This is awesome. I remember Hot Wheels Cereal. It was absolutely disgusting and I pitched my first bowl after one bite and hid the box in the garbage. Batman and Real Ghostbusters cereals were legit. I wonder how many more movies there are to mine. next time I watch an 80s or 90s film, I’ll give ya a heads up Matt.

Brian

Oh’s still taste pretty much the same and the front of the box is mostly unchanged. I like things that still look the same now as they did back then if they are still around.

Madra Rua

I don’t know what it is about branded cereals like that, but they always seem to taste terrible!

lol, yeah I wasn’t 100% sure if they did or not since I haven’t been in a K-Mart since the mid 90s…so I just looked online and thought they didn’t…my few memories of K-Mart are fuzzy.

Tom

Rifftrax! This movie is available from Rifftrax too, so you can enjoy the flashbacks and proper jokes!

Endless Joe

Ha, this is so funny because my name is Joe Huff. I thought you were talking directly to me, Matt. You obviously were not because The Boz is a cooler Joe Huff than I will ever be.

I would so Last Action Hero this movie and get me some of that Batman cereal and some neon colored vending machine toys.

Chris Striegel/@ChrisIsHCFest

” Neither Batman Cereal …. were particularly delicious,”

MY ASS IT WASN’T. Batman shaped Cap’n Crunch! Come on, man!

Anyway, I have so much love for this movie, like, SO MUCH, and I’ve only ever casually dissected this coolest-shootemup-in-a-supermarket-opening-scene-this-side-of-Cobra, so kudos to you forstudying it frame by frame. My study has heretofore been limited to noticing those great cereals of yesteryear on the shelf and thinking “hey cool” while the mulleted footballer did his best Marion Cobretti impression.

I wish The Boz did more over the top (I’m on my second Stallone reference already, clearly off to a good start here) action flicks, because Stone Cold is everything I love about the genre.

I’m not sure why I was so into him pre-Stone Cold but I was. I never liked or followed football even as a kid(I’m strictly a hockey guy)but I was all in on Boz’s cult of personality. I think I gravitated towards him because he was a controversial, outspoken figure and I’ve always been punk rock at heart, even before I knew what that meant. Maybe it was his Ivan Drago haircut (Stallone reference number 3; this has not been intentional) But I had THIS POSTER https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/fb/8a/0b/fb8a0b0c3fa5518b6a939069d3779f88.jpg on my wall (right next to a New Kids On the Block poster, how’s that for juxtaposition?) but yeah apparently he never amounted to shit in the NFL and only played for 3 seasons? Jeez.

I’m gonna watch Stone Cold again, it’s been awhile.

MrTroy

My wife thinks I am weird to pause old movies to see old foods, stuff from when I was a kid, or old versions of logos or packaging, my favorite is to get the price of the item but that is pretty hard to do most of the time due to the small font and poor quality of video.